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New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

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Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#61

Post by gruez »

MAGZine wrote: post #18
gjm11 wrote: post #10

In case anyone is wondering what they mean by "5D": they mean it's a 3D array of marks, each of which has both size and orientation. The 3D array is three 2D layers. According to this definition, a DVD or Blu-Ray disc is "4D" because it can have multiple layers each of which stores 1-dimensional data (pit versus no pit). And a book is at least "7D" because it contains a 3D arrangement of marks, and marks can vary in…

I think Dimension in the data sense of the word, not Dimension in the spatial sense of the word. Multi-dimension data is a thing, and it goes a lot higher than 4, 5, or 7.

>I think Dimension in the data sense of the word

Where else is that used? At least to me (and the common layperson), the only usage seems to be from people trying to hype up storage mediums.

also, if we're using that definition, does that mean I have a 7D SSD? The NAND cells are arranged on both the planar axis, and stacked (3d NAND). That's 3 dimensions. Each NAND cell also encodes data using various charge levels, which currently tops out at 4 bits. In total that makes for 3 + 4 = 7 dimensions.

Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#62

Post by rbanffy »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #44
MisterTea wrote: post #3

The other day I was talking with a friend about the high cost and perceived fragility of tape drives for long term personal archival while bemoaning the loss of higher density optical storage technology. It's not easy to backup or shuffle around terabytes of personal video, audio and pictures. Hard drives aren't exactly the right media for safe deposit boxes. In the 90's I had an Iomega Ditto 250MB drive that held 12…

I burn 100GB backups via blu-ray. One or two is enough for my non-movie files. They started stagnating a few years ago when streaming ascended however. Shame as I'd like higher capacity as well. Cheap USB flash drives are already moving into this space. I just got a compact 256GB one for $35 or so, just a matter of time. SD cards would probably be more convenient, but they aren't sadly aren't read in devices like ste…

That much music (even at lossless compression that’s a lifetime of nonstop music) is completely impractical to navigate using a common stereo UI

Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#63

Post by zamadatix »

tiffanyh wrote: post #38

Off topic: if I wanted to digital store files to pass down to my children that might not be access for decades , what's the best medium to store such data? Floppy/ZipDrive/CD-ROM/Blueray/USB-A are either obsolete or are on their way out. What's a future proof storage option? (and if you said Cloud Storage {X} - just look at how many services have folded in just the last few years alone). Secondly, what's the best fil…

As far as formats stick to either very popular or very simple. E.g. for video in 100 years time there is still going to be a way to be able to decode h.264 videos just because of the shear amount of content from this era that was encoded in it. Alternatively use a format that is so simple it doesn't matter if there is a decoder in 1,000,000 years as it's trivial to make. On the simplicity side take PPM or bitmap images for example, one can get a decoder up and running from scratch in a matter of minutes.

The harder half is the storage of the digital information over time. Interfaces, filesystems, formats, and devices are not made to last decades as there is no need for the vast majority of data to sit for decades without being transferred to newer, cheaper, and smaller media. Any solution you come up with to avoid copying will therefore be esoteric and one off, not to mention likely complicated for any significant amount of data, making it hard to guarantee easy enough readability even if it is physically fine in 100 years.

Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#64

Post by kmeisthax »

MisterTea wrote: post #3

The other day I was talking with a friend about the high cost and perceived fragility of tape drives for long term personal archival while bemoaning the loss of higher density optical storage technology. It's not easy to backup or shuffle around terabytes of personal video, audio and pictures. Hard drives aren't exactly the right media for safe deposit boxes. In the 90's I had an Iomega Ditto 250MB drive that held 12…

The problem is that much of the demand for cheap, shelf-stable backup media has gone away over the last decade or two. Most backup jobs either go to cloud or to disk, not tape. And because of that, tape drives are more expensive than ever, which takes away much of the benefit of the cheap media.

LTO, for example, is relegated to archival use-cases nowadays, such as video production. You'd think that would make sense, because the media's shelf stable... but it's actually really awful for archival. Why? Because new drives can't read old tapes past two generations, and old drives stop getting made. So every time a new tape drive generation comes out, a movie studio can't just upgrade drives in their libraries and use the new tapes. Nor can they just hold onto their old drives forever - what happens when they start breaking, and they can't read their old tapes anymore? (Or worse, an old/failing drive eats a tape?)

Every movie studio with an archival program is on a constant upgrade treadmill, including costly media migrations. That is, they're copying data from old tapes onto new, so they can maintain compatibility with new drives. This entirely defeats the purpose of shelf-stable media; if I can't buy newly manufactured drives for old tape formats then who cares if the tapes themselves can sit in a box for 20 years?

Now, let's say you're not a movie studio with a massive digital archival problem. You just want to backup 5 terabytes. Unfortunately, 5 terabytes is so little that tape vendors have forgotten how to count that low. It's far cheaper (not to mention, more performant) to just buy a bunch of disk drives and migrate data between them. Or just pay Amazon to do it. Which is what everyone wound up doing.

Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#65

Post by rbanffy »

mattowen_uk wrote: post #2

This is all well-and-good, but how do we read all that data in 500 years time, or even 20 years time? People were busily archiving data to CDs and DVDs two decades ago, thinking 'yeah this digital storage media will last for centuries!'... Loads of bit-rot combined with complete lack of DVD drives still in common [computer] usage, has totally shown that the more complex the storage media the shorter it's useful lifet…

It all depends on how technology changes. We can still read floppies written in the 70s with essentially a motor, something magnetic and a wire going around it (and a computer reading the currents). I’m pretty sure we’ll know how to cobble together an optical microscope and camera device to read at least one bit out of every volume cell. Let’s just hope the data format is simple enough.

Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#66

Post by rbanffy »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #30
MivLives wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a well known problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

Yup it's a well-known problem, but several of us still have CDs decades old that still do read totally fine. That doesn't mean we rely on them as backups: mine have long since been copied to DVDs, then more recent DVDs but also backup'ed on harddrive / servers etc.

CDs and DVDs are pressed. Recordable media is not and, with the wrong conditions, will rot.

DVD-RWs will get corrupted if you look funny at them.

Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#67

Post by AtlasBarfed »

gjm11 wrote: post #10

In case anyone is wondering what they mean by "5D": they mean it's a 3D array of marks, each of which has both size and orientation. The 3D array is three 2D layers. According to this definition, a DVD or Blu-Ray disc is "4D" because it can have multiple layers each of which stores 1-dimensional data (pit versus no pit). And a book is at least "7D" because it contains a 3D arrangement of marks, and marks can vary in…

They mentioned 500TB for a single glass disk, isn't that 100,000x more than a 5GB blu-ray, or are they comparing it with the 10-layer blu-rays that never really hit the market?

Is this the same UK group that did all the holographic disc research that is basically vaporware in the mass market (I don't want to call their research vaporware, just that it never hit the consumer market)?

Edit: Whoops. 4.7 geebees is for a regular DVD, not a Blu-ray. Dual layer blu-ray is 50GB

Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#69

Post by mixmastamyk »

rbanffy wrote: post #62
mixmastamyk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I burn 100GB backups via blu-ray. One or two is enough for my non-movie files. They started stagnating a few years ago when streaming ascended however. Shame as I'd like higher capacity as well. Cheap USB flash drives are already moving into this space. I just got a compact 256GB one for $35 or so, just a matter of time. SD cards would probably be more convenient, but they aren't sadly aren't read in devices like ste…

That much music (even at lossless compression that’s a lifetime of nonstop music) is completely impractical to navigate using a common stereo UI

Not really, it's about five clicks to start an album, which I'm pretty adept with, and plays for an hour. I have several hundred in Letter/Artist/Year,Album order. Less work than futzing with the radio constantly, which is generally terrible (unless you love tired top-40).

Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#70

Post by louwrentius »

mattowen_uk wrote: post #2

This is all well-and-good, but how do we read all that data in 500 years time, or even 20 years time? People were busily archiving data to CDs and DVDs two decades ago, thinking 'yeah this digital storage media will last for centuries!'... Loads of bit-rot combined with complete lack of DVD drives still in common [computer] usage, has totally shown that the more complex the storage media the shorter it's useful lifet…

Archiving data is a process, not a one-time effort.

You can't just store data on a medium and hope if that medium will last.

You have to periodically check for defects and from time to time, transfer data to fresh media.

At some point, you may even need to convert the data to keep it readable...

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